If you already have a customer persona, review it to make sure that you have covered all relevant preferences or behaviour that will affect your product or service. It is also important that it is up to date.

#2 Analyse your competitors

Make a list of your top three worst and best competitors.

Beside each competitor, jot points on how your business is/could be better than theirs. This will determine how you should position and market your business.

#3 Decide on four marketing goals

Must it be four? Yes.

Four is a good number for most small businesses like Mark’s gym because it is realistic. Too many goals will easily cause burnout, leading to no specific marketing results.

All of your four goals should directly impact your bottom line, i.e. increase your business revenue. Goals will vary depending on your industry and business life-cycle stage.

Here are some guidelines to follow when creating your marketing goals:

Find out where your business stands at now (number of leads, revenue, customer acquisition rate), and set the bar higher.

Be specific. Have actual numbers rather than general ideas. E.g. “55 online leads per week” vs “increase leads generation”.

Goals should be measurable. If you can’t determine whether you achieved your goals, what is the point of creating one in the first place?

Set a time-limit. Each goal should have a deadline, after which it should already be achieved.

Once again, remember that your four goals should always link back to increasing your business revenue.

#4 Identify four key activities that will achieve those goals

Once your goals are set, the next question is “how to achieve them?”

If “leads generation” is one of your goals, some marketing activities could be designing a landing page or content marketing.

It is best to keep it to four because again, having too many will lead to burnout and achieve nothing. Rather than attempt to do everything halfway, focus on a few key activities and go all the way with it.

This is often what differentiates the successful business from the less successful ones.

#5 Have three key KPIs

List three key performance indicators (KPIs) for your marketing campaign to determine if it is successful at the end of the day.

Refers to the number of people who searched for your website on their own.

Social media traffic and conversion rates

Lead conversions generated via each social media channel.

Customer conversions generated via each social media channels

Percentage of traffic associated with social media channels

Analysing such metrics will help you to focus your efforts on the more effective social media channels.

Traffic-to-lead ratio (aka new contact rate)

If this ratio is low, it means that people are visiting your site but are not filling out the form. Examples of forms are “contact a rep” forms, “sign up for newsletter” forms or “download my free ebook” forms.

A lead is one who fills up such forms and leaves their contact details.

Choose a suitable software that can help automate your analytics for you. This pinpoints areas in your marketing that are doing well and ones that are not, giving you insights on how to improve.

#6 Constantly review and make changes if necessary (Ongoing)

Be clear on the fact that your marketing plan is never set in stone, it changes constantly.